John Buell

Unions, Worker Rights and Economic Progress

A friend of ours, a recent college graduate who now lives in
Germany, just emailed some good news: "Yesterday, my employer
presented me with a written job offer. A monthly salary of E3,000
[circa $4,000] before taxes, a title of Manager in
Marketing/Communications, a provisionary time of 6 months (during
which I can technically be fired with a notice of 4 weeks), 30
vacation days per year, and the possibility for a bonus that is
calculated on the number of projects that we complete annually that I
think, could reach as high as E5,600." If you only read George Will
(See his early March syndicated column, "Dwindling Unions Seek
Employer Muzzle"), your immediate reaction might be to repeat the
standard business press mantra: Europe is going down the tube because
workers have too much power. A rookie employee must get a month's
free vacation and even in the first six months has to be given a
month's notice before you sack him! Though our friend's position is
not covered by a union, he and many other European workers have
achieved comparable benefits and protections due to heavy union
density and laws enacted by union-backed social democratic
parties.

Here in America, workers and bosses are cut out of tougher stuff.
Not only do bosses not want unions, so, we are told, most employees
don't want them either. Unions, Will suggests, have used the excuse
of anti-union pressure by employers to explain their declining
presence. He contends that "such supposed pressure is one of
organized labor's alibis for declining membership. There are,
however, ample protections against employer pressures that really are
abusive. Today's work force is marvelously flexible. People entering
the labor market at age 18 will have, on average, 10 employers by the
time they are 38. Such mobile workers often do not see what value
union membership would add to their lives."

One wonders what Will means by abusive practices? For a
law-and-order conservative, Will takes a curiously lax attitude
toward lawlessness on a massive scale. Even George Bush's National
Labor Relations Board, the most conservative and pro-business in the
board's history, has found illegal management activity, usually
firing suspected union supporters, in one of every four union
elections. The kind of free speech of which Will claims to be so
solicitous evokes employer intimidation because the penalties are
trivial. In a recent email exchange, Matt Beck, an organizer for the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, pointed just how
heavily the cards are stacked against union activists here in my home
state of Maine: "I have to warn these union activists that there is a
fairly good chance that they will get fired for their organizing
activities. If they do, we will fight to get them their jobs back,
but in the meantime all of their co-workers will be so freaked out
that the union campaign is likely to fail."

In recent years, American workers have been very productive, but
they have been unable to recoup their fair share of productivity
gains. In the last three decades, the period in which corporate
employers have been conducting their most systematic attacks on
unions, worker compensation gains have trailed gains in their
productivity by fifty percent. Many Maine and US workers are aware of
these facts. Polls conducted over many years show that more workers
want some form of independent voice in the workplace. As Beck points
out, union members aren't getting rich but "at least they are earning
a respectable wage. And they have a voice at the table, which is
something conservative ideologues such as George Will clearly
resent."

European economies have problems, but their performance belies
the simple conservative notion that low taxes and "flexible", i. e.
non-union, workplaces are the key to prosperity or competitiveness. A
recent study by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives shows
that European nations have not had to sacrifice economic gains in
order to afford a reasonable level of protection for the most
vulnerable and basic workplace rights for all employees. Unlike the
US, Europe runs a consistent balance of trade surplus.

The Nordic states are especially strong along such economic
performance measures as unit labor costs and high GDP per hour worked
even as they have achieved greater income equality, more leisure
time, and higher levels of social satisfaction.

American corporations now enjoy inordinate privileges in our law.
They are legal persons with guarantees of limited liability that
protect their investors against any loss greater than the amount of
their initial investment regardless of how socially or
environmentally destructive their corporate performance.

Corporations that deny basic rights of self-protection to their
workers should lose their corporate charter. American corporations
function best both for their investors and the larger society when
they face some effective countervailing power. US workers, no matter
what their level of education, are unlikely to enjoy the kind of job
our friend has recently been offered as long as US managements can so
easily crush efforts to discuss let alone commence unionization.